Incredible Twitter Backlinks Experiment

This article is a review of TwitterBacklinks.com – the new service that I have decided to put through the ringers by conducting an experiment. I want to see how effective Twitter is for backlinks and how fast websites can be ranked solely from Twitter.

Twitter Backlinks? How Important Are They for Ranking?

First, we know that backlinks are still the most influential factor underlying how fast a chiropractic website ranks and how HIGH it will rank in Google/Bing.

What has changed due to last years Google Panda update, is Google no longer values “junk” or “spam” backlinks. It only wants high quality backlinks. Such as those from BacklinkNirvana.com and similar services. But also…

They are placing much greater emphasis on Social Voting and Social Signals like I wrote about in this article here. So the other ranking factor now is your Social Popularity in the eyes of Google, eg. how many Facebook “Likes”, how many reviews about you on sites like Yelp and Google Places, the number of Google +1 “votes”… and… how many people are discussing you on Twitter.

I am conducting an experiment focusing on Twitter. I want to know: Do backlinks gotten from twitter help a website rank? Is Google seeing twitter backlinks? And, how important are twitter backlinks, in other words, are they that powerful and could we push a website up the rankings solely from Twitter? That is what I aim to find out from this experiment.

My Experiment

For this experiment, we will make Google see that one of my webpages has suddenly caught fire and is surging in social popularity. This will be accomplished using a new service launched called TwitterBacklinks.com and we will be having people “retweet” my URL like crazy on Twitter.

In short, if a bunch of people are using Twitter to “talk about you” and they’re dropping your chiropractic website URL into that twiter message, this is strong evidence to Google/Bing that your “social popularity” is surging and growing.

Since Google wants to display the most relevant results always, who would they rather display at the top of Google: A website that NO ONE is talking about in the social “voting” realm vs. a website that 34 just Tweeted about?

I have no affiliation to TwitterBacklinks.com service and I have told them I am putting their service through the ringer via this public experiment.

Day 1 – My Setup.

The test: Here was my experiment.

Using only twitterbacklinks.com, would I be able to rank for the keyword “socialadr review” for this webpage here:

And how fast? This would prove if (a) twitter is a good source to use for backlinks, (b) if consistent retweets of backlinks has an SEO benefit? and (c) validatation or invalidation of this new service called TwitterBacklinks.com.

I purchased the Enterprise Plan. This gets me 125 re-tweets daily or 3,750 per month.

Next, I logged into my Twitter account. Then I posted a Twitter message using my “keyword” and webpage URL. Here is what the Twitter message looked like:

Then I had to find the URL for this twitter message. All I needed to do was click on the little “time stamp” shown here and this displays the “URL” for my twitter post:

Then all I had to do was paste this link into TwitterBacklinks. (I put a red box around the twitter URL)

That’s it. Now the Re-Tweets Will Happen Automatically.

And that’s all the “work” I need to do! Twitterbacklinks now takes over and re-tweets my twitter message. Done.

Now let’s check in 12-hours later and see what has happened…

12-Hours Later

I got an email that my Twitter message was approved. Now I just needed to sit back and watch the action happen.

Results 24-Hours Later

I was VERY pleased to see that already my twitter message had been re-tweeted over 120+ times in less than 24 hours. This means I got 120 social backlinks pointing to my webpage and now Google will start to see my website as growing in popularity.

RewteetRank.com showed me in the top 98% percentile for retweets, meaning I am suddenly in the top 2% for all Twitter users for social popularity based on the numbers of people sharing my twitter post. Take a look!

Update: Jan. 16, 2012

Well, it definitely appears we are getting the Google dance. Yesterday our rankings had appeared to “vanish”. Now today they have all but returned upwards again. Lots of movement within the last seventy-two hours for sure.

Now, I have experience to tell me not to put too much weight in these great swings (plus OR minus) because this often happens when Google is doing its Dance. But it will be interesting to see how the rankings end up.

By the way, this is an important insight: This experiment is ONLY using TwiiterBacklinks.com, but in the “real world” you would never only do ONE method nor rely on one method. I also mentioned that in my rather lengthy response in a comment belo as well.

So, it wil be interesting to see in the coming weeks if TwitterBacklinks.com causes “temporary” surges only or will it also aid in a long term “stick” rate? We will have to see.

I will only be updating again if/when anything swings and seems to STAY either down or up again.

Very interesting so far! Thanks for reading this experiment.

By the way...

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Here is where you are wrong: If you believe that google keyword tool is accurate, you don’t have much experience doing keyword research! Sorry. Ask any of my local chiropractors, and they will tell you that searching for “their local city + chiropractor” often will show “no results.” If you think this means that no one is really searching at all for chiropractors in all the smaller towns and cities across the USA, well, I have some swamp land in Jersey to sell you.

A client recently searched for “fairport chiropractor.” Here is what he saw:

Yet his web stats show that he gets hundreds of hits for this exact search phrase. I can share dozens of similar examples of this, in fact, in SEO circles this is such common knowledge that no one even debates it.

In fact, MOST OF THE TIME, Google shows “no search results” for what are known as “long tail keyword phrases.” I repeat: this does not mean that no one is searching for it. Google themselves admit they do not keep track of keyword search result data for the majority of the keyword variants people are typing into Google since those variants are probably measured in the billions.

Now. Back to the purpose of this experiment: Within 72 hours we are ranking (using only twitter) against 102,000 competing pages for that exact phrase:

If there were really “zero searches” for a keyword phrase, there would be no need for 102,000 competing pages for that search phrase LOL. I once ranked for a tennis term that google keyword tool said had “no search results”, yet for this one blog post we average over 110 hits per day. Hmmm…. what does that tell you? I have dozens of examples like this as do other experienced niche marketers.

But bigger picture – the point of this experiment wasn’t how to rank for an impossible keyword in 72 hours. It’s purpose was to ONLY use twitter backlinks and determine if it had ANY sway. This shows it clearly does, especially considering this is a new blog AND that I have done literally nothing else to promote this keyword.

If ALL you are using is twitter for backlinks, you are missing the point here. That would be a poor strategy. Twitter should not be used all by itself. Twitter should be used within a broader framework of tactics. I strongly recommend utilizing seven “social signals” that we teach here in our members-only guide here:

Chris – to answer your first questions, the truthful answer is we are unsure exactly the best keyword approach. What I tried to do was (a) use the keyword in the titter message that would get re-tweeted and then (b) make sure the keyword was also in the title tags and description for that webpage (known as On-Page Optimization). This is good SEO practice anyway.

To your second question about DoctorsExtremeIncome.com – Thanks for the nice comments. I’m glad your friends are enjoying it. We reopen the DEII training once per year so it will be Nov/Dec. of 2012 when that reopens. Make sure to get on the waiting list for announcements as the program re-opening gets closer.

Probably not. They have settled at the last ranking update. So the rankings seem to have been successful. Remember though that twitter backlinks should be ONE of many tools you use to rank your chiropractic site – not the ONLY one.

Just finished watching your Facebook Timeline videos (excellent) and downloaded your PDF…just got finished updating my Facebook Page using your suggestions. I used Jing to capture my cover picture (which was free, thanks to you!). It was easy and I am sure that no one in our profession is even close to doing this. Thanks for making this one easy! Keep them coming!

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